Reader Texl's Road To One Million Gold

Today's guest post was written by Power Word: Gold reader and /r/WoWGoldMaking community member Texl. If you've reached a gold-making milestone and would like to share your experiences with the Power Word: Gold readers send us an email at [email protected].


One million gold! Six months ago the most I'd ever seen at once was about 50k, so hitting this milestone was quite a rush.

What started out as a plan to collect enough gold to buy up pieces for the then-rumored caster legendary soon became an interest in itself - I found making gold quite enjoyable, to the point where probably half of my play time was involved in gold-making pursuits. Now, I find myself out of game reading gold-making blogs and forums as much as raid strategy and class gameplay tips.

What you're all probably most interested in, though, is how I did it. I don't think I've done anything that would surprise seasoned gold-makers but after the jump you'll find my commentary on what I found effective (and not-so-effective) by profession.

Alchemy

Potions: one of my main sources of income. I mainly deal in what I consider the 5 main potions - Volcanic Potion, Golemblood Potion, Potion of the Tol'vir, Potion of Concentration, and Mythical Mana Potion. I maintain persistent AH stock of 5 stacks of 20 per type, and cancel/repost often to discourage competition and raise sales volume. The margins are not large, but there's consistent demand. To date, I've sold about 76,000 potions at margins ranging from 1g to 10g each.

Flasks: every once in a while when I get a great deal on herbs, I make a few batches of whatever flask seems profitable. They sell, but the guild cauldrons have certainly put a dent in what was long ago a very steady-demand market.

Potion of Illusion / Deepstone Oil: I tried these out because the margins were good. Sales volume was disappointing, though, and it felt like I spent more time reposting expired auctions than collecting gold.

Transmutes: I try to do a daily transmute, even on my non-transmute alchemists - it's free gold. Most of the time I do Living Elements, as the products are easier to move on the AH, but when Truegold is much more profitable I switch to that.

Enchanting

Disenchanting: buying cheap greens and melting them is free money, especially near content release time when Enchanting materials are in high demand. Disenchanting is also useful to melt the products of the infamous Obsidium Shuffle.

Enchant Cloak - Stealth: this is the best enchant available for BOA melee cloaks (8 agility), but it's only available from an exalted BC faction or a rare drop in AQ so it's not too common. I sell several of these a week at around 200g, materials cost is usually 50g tops.

Engineering

Engineering Pets: Pet Bombling, Lil' Smoky, Mechanical Squirrel Box. All are incredibly easy to find / learn, and all sell on my server for up to 100-150g margin. They're a bit of a pain to make, but since my main is my engineer it's something fun to do while I wait for raids to form up.

Gnomish X-Ray Scope: when Cataclysm launched, these flooded my market at rock-bottom prices (5-10g) - they're on the Engineering leveling path, and everyone was eager to get their helms made at 525. I bought up 50 or so and resold all of them before 4.2 hit at around 200-250g each. These days, unfortunately, I doubt they're a good investment.

Electrified Ether: 2 Volatile Air yield 2.5 Electrified Ether on average. Strangely, the Electrified Ether are often more expensive on the AH, despite the fact that most of its users are engineers that are able to make it more cheaply themselves. I suspect this is a market of ignorance, as the pattern originally only yielded 1 Electrified Ether per 2 Volatile Air.

Inscription

Darkmoon Faire Trinkets: Naturally, this is the largest Inscription moneymaker by far. It carries some risk, though, and is rather labor-intensive if you attempt to do it on a large scale. I made 47 trinkets for the Faire two months ago, which involved milling approximately 4000 stacks of herbs - but the payout was approximately 250k gold. These days, I'm considering dropping this - the labor hasn't changed at all, but prices are dropping due to competition from T12 gear.

Mysterious Fortune Cards / Fortune Cookies: I dabbled in this for some time, and it's a nice profit - but it's the same labor as the Darkmoon Faire trinkets for a much smaller profit. Finding a consistent outlet for Inferno Ink is getting harder, too, without dipping back into Darkmoon Faire trinkets.

Relics: I sold a lot of these as outlets for Inferno Ink back when they were still relevant. It's incredibly easy to get a nice relic just by running a few dungeons now, though.

Glyphs: I've tried to avoid this market as much as possible due to the glut of glyph sellers on my server, but occasionally I'll do a scan for any glyphs with a high margin and post what I think will sell.

Jewelcrafting

Obsidium Shuffle: I've tried to avoid this as much as possible too, as it's a lot of non-automated work. With the release of 4.2, though, I've seen some great profits using the Shuffle to output as many Inferno Rubies and Enchanting materials as possible.

Tailoring

Dreamcloth / Spellthread: I try to make Dreamcloth weekly and hoard it until content release time. In past expansions the spellthread market would flood the same as all the other item enhancement markets but since Dreamcloth is rate-limited I'm able to dump my entire stash at good prices without much competition.

Embersilk Bags: These are a good Hypnotic Dust sink, and are profitable on their own as well.

General

Rares: This is another one of my large moneymakers. I use a snatch list compiled from several found on various gold-making forums, and buy low / sell high. It's by no means a market for the impatient, but there is the possibility of massive profits. I've spent about 4k buying three Enchant Shield - Lesser Block formulae, and have sold two of them at a combined total of about 38k. A Dig Rat Stew recipe I picked up for 15g early in Cataclysm sold yesterday for 20k. Do some research, set up some notifications on The Undermine Journal, and if you're patient enough you can find some real gems.

Valor Points: Nothing fancy here. After a few weeks of raid clears, I had nothing better to do with my Valor Points than to sell off some BOE boots. I suspect the new BOE bracers will be more of the same.

Now What?

People ask what I'm going to do now that I've reached cap, but I think that's missing the point a bit. While it's nice to see that magic seventh figure in my gold total, the real fun for me has been earning it - and I intend to press on to 2 million and beyond.

-Texl

Thanks again to Texl for taking the time to record their experience on the road to one million gold. Congratulations again! In commemoration of Texl's great accomplishment this post will be added to the Community Gold-Making Milestones page . I hope we hear more from Texl in the future. (Hint hint.)

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